Studies in Religion and Literature – serie

As the discourse of contemporary cultural studies brings questions of race, nationality, and gender to the center of critical attention nowadays, there is a strong sense that religious, or perhaps religious experience, should command the attention of the academic and wider reading community. Seeing into the Life of Things is a response to that need. By combining the theoretical and the practical, this book serves as both a pioneering scholarly contribution to a devleoping field and a valuable guide for those who read, reflect on, and discuss points of intersection of religion and literature. The contributors to this pioneering study represent a range of voices and viewpoints, some of them established leaders in their fields, others in the process of becoming new leaders. E. Dennis Taylor, Joseph Appleyard, Philip Rule, John Boyd, and Jane and Charles Rzepka work toward the development of a discourse that can take its place with discourses that have developed around a New Historicism and Feminism. Robert Kiely, Stephen Fix, Keven Van Anglen, J. Robert Barth, Richard Kearney, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Judith Wilt, John L. Mahoney, David Leigh, Melinda Ponder, John Anderson, and Michael Raiger offer more focused approaches to writers as varied as Gerard Manley Hopkins, Katherine Lee Bates, Flannery O'Connor, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, and Seamus Heaney and to special genres like spritual autobiography and film.

As the discourse of contemporary cultural studies brings questions of race, nationality, and gender to the center of critical attention nowadays, there is a strong sense that religious, or perhaps religious experience, should command the attention of the academic and wider reading community. Seeing into the Life of Things is a response to that need. By combining the theoretical and the practical, this book serves as both a pioneering scholarly contribution to a devleoping field and a valuable guide for those who read, reflect on, and discuss points of intersection of religion and literature. The contributors to this pioneering study represent a range of voices and viewpoints, some of them established leaders in their fields, others in the process of becoming new leaders. E. Dennis Taylor, Joseph Appleyard, Philip Rule, John Boyd, and Jane and Charles Rzepka work toward the development of a discourse that can take its place with discourses that have developed around a New Historicism and Feminism. Robert Kiely, Stephen Fix, Keven Van Anglen, J. Robert Barth, Richard Kearney, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Judith Wilt, John L. Mahoney, David Leigh, Melinda Ponder, John Anderson, and Michael Raiger offer more focused approaches to writers as varied as Gerard Manley Hopkins, Katherine Lee Bates, Flannery O'Connor, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, and Seamus Heaney and to special genres like spritual autobiography and film.

Circuitous Journeys: Modern Spiritual Autobiography provides a close reading and analysis of ten major life stories by twentieth-century leaders and thinkers from a variety of religious and cultural traditions: Mohandas Gandhi, Black Elk, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, C. S. Lewis, Malcolm X, Paul Cowan, Rigoberta Menchu, Dan Wakefield, and Nelson Mandela. The book uses approaches from literary criticism, developmental psychology (influenced by Erik Erikson, James Fowler, and Carol Gilligan), and spirituality (influenced by John S. Donne, Emile Griffin, Walter Conn, and Bernard Lonergan). Each text is read in the light of the autobiographical tradition begun by St. Augustine's Confessions, but with a focus on distinctively modern and post-modern transformations of the self-writing genre. The twentieth-century context of religious alienation, social autonomy, identity crises and politics, and the search for social justice is examined in each text.

Circuitous Journeys: Modern Spiritual Autobiography provides a close reading and analysis of ten major life stories by twentieth-century leaders and thinkers from a variety of religious and cultural traditions: Mohandas Gandhi, Black Elk, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, C. S. Lewis, Malcolm X, Paul Cowan, Rigoberta Menchu, Dan Wakefield, and Nelson Mandela. The book uses approaches from literary criticism, developmental psychology (influenced by Erik Erikson, James Fowler, and Carol Gilligan), and spirituality (influenced by John S. Donne, Emile Griffin, Walter Conn, and Bernard Lonergan). Each text is read in the light of the autobiographical tradition begun by St. Augustine's Confessions, but with a focus on distinctively modern and post-modern transformations of the self-writing genre. The twentieth-century context of religious alienation, social autonomy, identity crises and politics, and the search for social justice is examined in each text.

The original edition of this book studied the nature of symbol in Coleridge's work, showing that it is central to Coleridge's intellectual endeavor in poetry and criticism as well as in philosophy and theology. Symbol was for Coleridge essentially a religious reality, that participates in the nature of a sacrament as an encounter between material and spiritual reality. The author shows how Wordsworth and Coleridge developed a poetry, unlike that of the eighteenth century, based on symbolic imagination. He then related this symbolic poetry to the tradition of romanticism itself Richard Harter Fogle wrote of the original edition: "This is a just, graceful, and penetrating book. Considering the complexity of the material, it is lucid and often eloquent. Father Barth's interpretation of Coleridge's doctrine of symbol is essentially original, as are his illustrative readings from the poems. His substantial essay moves harmoniously from Coleridge's particular insights to their wider implications for romanticism." In this new edition, the author has enlarged the scope of his study, first reviewing in an introductory chapter the important scholarship of the past twenty years on symbol and imagination. He then goes on to give his work a deeper theological foundation, and to extend his argument to embrace what he calls Coleridge's "scriptural imagination." As in the original edition, he concludes that symbol is a phenomenon profoundly linked with the experience of romanticism itself and with a fundamental change in religious sensibility that has echoes even in our own time.

The original edition of this book studied the nature of symbol in Coleridge's work, showing that it is central to Coleridge's intellectual endeavor in poetry and criticism as well as in philosophy and theology. Symbol was for Coleridge essentially a religious reality, that participates in the nature of a sacrament as an encounter between material and spiritual reality. The author shows how Wordsworth and Coleridge developed a poetry, unlike that of the eighteenth century, based on symbolic imagination. He then related this symbolic poetry to the tradition of romanticism itself Richard Harter Fogle wrote of the original edition: "This is a just, graceful, and penetrating book. Considering the complexity of the material, it is lucid and often eloquent. Father Barth's interpretation of Coleridge's doctrine of symbol is essentially original, as are his illustrative readings from the poems. His substantial essay moves harmoniously from Coleridge's particular insights to their wider implications for romanticism." In this new edition, the author has enlarged the scope of his study, first reviewing in an introductory chapter the important scholarship of the past twenty years on symbol and imagination. He then goes on to give his work a deeper theological foundation, and to extend his argument to embrace what he calls Coleridge's "scriptural imagination." As in the original edition, he concludes that symbol is a phenomenon profoundly linked with the experience of romanticism itself and with a fundamental change in religious sensibility that has echoes even in our own time.

Beth Hawkins focuses on the problematic faith in the works of Kafka, Celan, and Jabès to reevaluate the notions of God and covenant in light of Nietzsche's "death of God" hypothesis. the divine-human relation. In Reluctant Theologians, she shows that Kafka, Celan, and Jabès offer as a testament, as three unique instances of Kiddush Ha-Shem (sanctification of the divine name), to a divine source that persists at the same time as it is being continuously reconstituted in the moment of writing. What connects Kafka, Celan, and Jabès to a postmodern philosophy is their shared belief that a specifically Jewish ethic can serve as a model for a universal ethic.

Beth Hawkins focuses on the problematic faith in the works of Kafka, Celan, and Jabès to reevaluate the notions of God and covenant in light of Nietzsche's "death of God" hypothesis. the divine-human relation. In Reluctant Theologians, she shows that Kafka, Celan, and Jabès offer as a testament, as three unique instances of Kiddush Ha-Shem (sanctification of the divine name), to a divine source that persists at the same time as it is being continuously reconstituted in the moment of writing. What connects Kafka, Celan, and Jabès to a postmodern philosophy is their shared belief that a specifically Jewish ethic can serve as a model for a universal ethic.

It has often been suggested that Romanticism of its very nature has affinities with religious quest and spiritual value. These new essays, written in honor of distinguished eighteenth-century and Romantic scholar John L. Mahoney, explore the intersection of Romanticism and religion. They range from broad considerations of this relationship in several Romantic writers to close readings of individual poems. The collection breaks new ground in the exploration of the role of religion in the Romantics experience and will be of interest not only to scholars of Romanticism and historians of nineteenth-century religion, but to anyone interested in the intellectual life of the nineteenth-century England.

It has often been suggested that Romanticism of its very nature has affinities with religious quest and spiritual value. These new essays, written in honor of distinguished eighteenth-century and Romantic scholar John L. Mahoney, explore the intersection of Romanticism and religion. They range from broad considerations of this relationship in several Romantic writers to close readings of individual poems. The collection breaks new ground in the exploration of the role of religion in the Romantics experience and will be of interest not only to scholars of Romanticism and historians of nineteenth-century religion, but to anyone interested in the intellectual life of the nineteenth-century England.

The question of Shakespeare's Catholic contexts has occupied many scholars in recent years, and their growing body of work has been enriched by revisionist accounts of the Reformation society and culture in which he lived and worked. This innovative book brings together sixteen original essays by leading scholars who examine Shakespeare's works in light of this new scholarship: their goal is to explore a possible interpretive consensus from Protestant, Catholic, and secular perspectives. Offering stimulating new approaches to traditional problems in Shakespeare studies, the essays provide a fully developed picture of Shakespeare's relation to the Reformation—in the light of newly unearthed religious contexts. From the monastic life in Measure for Measure to Puritanism in Hamlet , the essays offer fresh understandings of such themes as majority cultures, national self-definition, hidden trauma, and concealed identity. Contributors: Dennis Taylor, Richard Dutton, Katharine Goodland, Clare Asquith, Jean-Christophe Mayer, Timothy Rosendale, Gary D. Hamilton, Regina M. Buccola, John Klause, John Freeman, R. Chris Hassel Jr., Jennifer Rust, David Beauregard, Maurice Hunt, Lisa Hopkins, Richard Mallette, and Paula McQuade.

In the engaging Chesterton and Evil, Mark Knight offers a compelling analysis of the increasingly marginalized, but undoubtedly influential Gilbert Keith Chesterton and his late 19th and early 20th century fiction. In his Autobiography Chesterton observed: "Perhaps, when I eventually emerged as a sort of theorist, and was described as an Optimist, it was because I was one of the few people in that world of diabolism who really believed in devils." Arguing that a serious analysis of the nature of evil is at the center of his fiction, Chesterton and Evil offers an exciting, new interdisciplinary reading of Chesterton's work, and provides a means of locating it among important theological and cultural concerns of his age.